Mr Mercedes – My Dark Tower Interlude read

Stephen King has called Mr Mercedes his first hard-boiled detective novel and this certainly does have an impact on the pace of the book. I have to confess that there are a few books of King I really do enjoy, but parts of them that do drag which require motivation to power through. It usually is the symptom of King’s bloated books such as The Stand and Under the Dome, brilliant must reads but in parts have a tendency to drag. Mr Mercedes is relatively small in comparison and I can honestly say the book kept me compelled throughout.

Mr Mercedes probably is a hard-boiled detective novel, I am not familiar with the genre but looking up the definition there certainly is a match. Nevertheless, although this maybe a new genre King is experimenting with, for the well-read reader, it is King through and through. Although King is best known for his supernatural novels, he also has written a number of “real-life” novels, Misery is probably his best known one. Mr Mercedes is a “real-life” novel and really had a Bachman Book feel to it – it was a very welcomed read!

For well-read King fans, this book keeps to the in-jokes and references, plenty of casual racism and smoking. The young adult antagonist, who still occasionally sleeps with his mother (yes, there’s incest here too), drives a Mercedes into a crowd of jobseekers wearing a mask resembling Pennywise the Clown. Christine is also referenced in this book which I thought was a great link to both this book and Pennywise, as Christine makes an appearance in IT.

King is brilliant at incorporating contemporary popular culture into his stories; a lot of his books when written are firmly grounded in the here and now. King cleverly separates the film adaptations of his books recognising that his work had been woven into popular culture. He did this in second volume of The Dark Tower series with Kubrick’s The Shining and he has done that with this book by reference the film adaptations of IT and Christine which really work with the overall feel of Mr Mercedes.

The ending fell slightly flat for me more so than usual, there were too many loose ends. I suppose it fell more dramatically because the pace of this book is so fast, the book suddenly just, well stops. Initially I just justified it as a typical devise King uses, he doesn’t plot, it’s the journey not the destination blah blah blah. To my absolute joy I found out that Mr Mercedes is the first volume of a projected trilogy. The sequel is due to be published in the first half of 2015 and is titled Finders Keepers – I cannot wait!

The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three (Book two)

I was born the year the second instalment of The Dark Tower series was published. King also published three other books in 1987: The Eyes of the Dragon, Misery and finally Tommyknockers. As I have explained in my first couple of blogs, I don’t believe you have to read King chronologically. The Dark Tower series is an exception but even then the last instalment Through the Keyhole creates linear havoc. There is no point reading The Drawing of the Three (book two) if you have not read The Gunslinger (book one) so with that pearl of wisdom I will begin.

 

The story begins shortly after where The Gunslinger ended, on the edge of the Western Sea. Roland awakes in the middle of the night discovering that the incoming tide has brought a horde of Lovecraftian crawling, carnivorous creatures, brilliantly described as ‘lobstrosities’. Roland gets seriously wounded by the creatures, losing the first two fingers of right hand to them – pretty tragic for a gunslinger.

 

After Roland manages to escape the lobstrosities, he encounters three doors standing freely upon the beach. Each door opens upon our world, upon New York City where Jake lived. Roland visits New York at three points along our time continuum, both in an effort to save his own life and to draw the three who must accompany him on his road to the Tower.

 

Eddie Dean is The Prisoner (as in the Tarot card drawn by the man in black), who is a heroin addict from the New York of the late 1980s, so when the book was first published, this would be the present time. Roland steps through the door on the beach of his world and into Eddie Dean’s mind as Eddie, working for a man named Enrico Balazar as a cocaine mule. In the course of their harrowing adventures together, Roland is able to obtain a limited quantity of penicillin and to bring Eddie Dean back to his own world.

 

The second door leads Roland to The Lady of the Shadows who is actually two personalities in one body. This time Roland finds himself in the New York of the early 1960s and comes face to face with a young disabled civil rights activist named Odetta Holmes. The woman hidden inside Odetta is a crafty and hate-filled Detta Walker. When the double woman is pulled into Roland’s world, the results are volatile for Eddie and Roland whose health is rapidly declining. Odetta believes that what’s happening to her is either a dream or a delusion; Detta, a much more brutally direct intellect, simply dedicates herself to the task of killing Roland and Eddie, whom she sees as torturing white devils.

 

Jack Mort, a serial killer hiding behind the third door is Death and leads to New York in the mid-1970s. Mort has twice caused great changes in the life of Odetta Holmes/Detta Walker, although neither of them know it. Mort, whose MO is to either push his victims or drop something on them from above, has done both to Odetta during the course of his mad but calculated career.

 

When Odetta was a child, he dropped a brick on her head, sending the little girl into a coma and also triggering the creation of Detta Walker, a split personality disorder. Years later, in 1959, Mort encounters Odetta again and pushes her into the path of an oncoming subway train in Greenwich Village. Odetta survives Mort again, but at a price: the oncoming train severed both legs at the knee. Only the presence of a heroic young doctor saves her life – or so it would seem. To Roland’s eye, these interrelationships suggest a power greater than mere coincidence; he believes the titanic forces which surround the Dark Tower have begun to gather once again.

 

Roland learns that Mort may stand at the heart of another mystery as well, one which is also a potentially mind-destroying paradox. For the victim Mort is stalking at the time the gunslinger steps into his life is none other than Jake. Roland has never had any cause to doubt Jake’s story of how he died in our world, nor any cause to question who Jake’s murderer was – the man in black. Jake saw him dressed as a preist as a the crowd gathered around the spot where he lay dying, and Roland had never doubted the description.

 

Roland starts to ponder whether it was Jack Mort who pushed Jake into the path of the oncoming Cadillac? Roland arrives in Jack’s body just as he is about to push Jake into traffic (the event that leads to Jake’s appearance in The Gunslinger), and stops him from doing so. Under Roland’s control, Jack acquires medicine and ammunition that Roland needs to survive, then jumps in front of the same subway that hit Odetta/Detta years earlier

 

Eddie accepts his place in Roland’s world because he has fallen in love with The Lady of the Shadows. Detta Walker and Odetta Holmes, the other two of Roland’s three, are driven together into one personality combining elements of both Detta and Odetta when the gunslinger is finally able to force the two personalities to acknowledge each other. This compound is able to accept and return Eddie’s love. Odetta Susannah Holmes and Detta Susannah Walker thus become a new woman, a third woman: Susannah Dean. Is this confirmation that the Lady of the Shadows has multiple personality disorder has just been cured?

 

Jack Mort dies beneath the wheels of the same subway – that fabled A-train – which took Odetta’s legs fifteen or sixteen years before. No great loss there. For the first time in untold years, Roland of Gilead is no longer alone in his quest for the Dark Tower. Cuthbert and Alain have been replaced by Eddie and Susannah.

Connections

The Drawing of the Three is connected to The Eyes of the Dragon which was published the same year the criticism King received for the book inspired Misery, also published the same year. In The Eyes of the Dragon, Dennis and Thomas, who I imagined were lovers (they would have been if they were in Game of Thrones) went off chasing Randall Flagg and the book left this chase hanging open to be revisited. In The Drawing of the Three, that revisiting occurs, as Roland tells a tale of witnessing the chase. Amazed at Flagg’s power, he was shocked when he saw one of them being turned into a dog. Maybe that’s not the end to the story that some readers wanted, but it’s definitely a cap on Dennis, Thomas and The Eyes of the Dragon and brings that book firmly into the Dark Tower mythology.

The book also makes a connection to The Shining, specifically Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Eddie Dean mentions The Shining twice. King’s opinion on Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is well documented and I have written about it in another blog. It is an interesting statement how King’s work has become part of popular culture which he weaves into his work but these reference to my mind shows him distancing and separating himself from the film; the film exists in the external reality and not part of the internal story.

The first mention of it is while Roland is looking through the doorway into Oedtta’s world:

Now the view through the doorway made one of those turns the gunslinger found so dizzying— but Eddie found this same abrupt swoop oddly comforting. Roland had never seen a movie. Eddie had seen thousands, and what he was looking at was like one of those moving point-of-view shots they did in ones like Halloween and The Shining. He even knew what they called the gadget they did it with. Steadicam.

 

This demonstrates that Kubrick’s The Shining is categorised with Halloween, it’s a well-known horror movie and that’s where it ends.

The second mention of it is again Roland looking through Odetta’s eyes:

 

He was staring into the doorway, hypnotized, as an aisle of Macy’s rushed forward— he was reminded again of The Shining, where you saw what the little boy was seeing as he rode his trike through the hallways of that haunted hotel. He remembered the little boy had seen this creepy pair of dead twins in one of those hallways.

 

This did not happen in the book, so this firmly puts the film as a separate entity to King’s book.

 

To conclude and to reiterate, you do not need to read King chronologically in fact I would not recommend that. The Dark Tower series was the anomaly until the sequel to The Shining came out in 2013. I would definitely recommend reading The Shining, it was the first King book I read, before reading Doctor Sleep.

 

I am going to have a quick interlude in my Dark Tower blogging as the next book I am going to read and blog about is King’s latest book, Mr Mercedes.

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (Book one)

The “About the Author” part The Gunslinger was so succinct in summarising where the idea of The Dark Tower series came from it’s just easier to quote it here in the introduction:

“At the age of 19, Stephen King decided he would like to write an epic similar to The Lord of the Rings. The ‘spaghetti Westerns’ of that time [specifically The Good, the Bad and the Ugly] and a poem written by Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, became the inspiration for what King described as his magnum opus.”

 

The array of genres that influenced and inspired King growing up have been fused together making The Dark Tower utterly unique. The series simply cannot be put into one genre: it’s fantasy, science fiction, horror, weird and western. It really can only be categorised as Stephen King.

 

The latest edition of The Gunslinger published by Hodder & Stoughton has at the beginning of the book: “Introduction on Being Nineteen (and a few other things)”. It’s brilliant and if you haven’t read it, I definitely recommend it. I wanted to provide an extract of that text which I have provided below:

 

“I was nineteen. There was not so much of a strand of gray in my beard. I had three pairs of jeans, one pair of boots, the idea that the world was my oyster, and nothing that happened in the next twenty years proved me wrong. The, around the age of thirty-nine, my troubles set in drink, drugs, a road accident that changed the way I walked (among other things). I’ve written about them at length and need not write about them here. Besides, it’s the same for you, right? The world eventually sends out a mean-ass Patrol Boy to slow your progress and show you who’s boss. You reading this have undoubtedly met yours (or will); I met mine, and I’m sure he’ll be back. He’s got my address. He’s a men guy, a Bad Lieutenant, the sworn enemy of goofery, fuckery, pride, ambition, loud music, and all things nineteen.”

 

I have to agree with this assessment.  19 was a highly significant and arrogant age for me too. I started my first year of law school, I was living in South Kensington, I felt fabulous as I’d lost 5 stone that summer, I was newly out and proud: the world was MINE for the taking. Eight years on and I have had successes, I am fortunate in many ways but in others, that “mean-ass Patrol Boy” King speaks of has definitely slowed my progress. Certain events have not gone to plan, most drastically, I no longer want to practice law. This of course is life,

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it doesn’t matter how hungry you are for something, that hunger cannot always make the food appear, there are other factors at play. My 19-year-old self though believed that if I willed it, it would just happen.

 

Before I begin writing about the story (well 5 short stories), I want to take this opportunity to clarify me reading chronology. The Eyes of the Dragon was the last book I said I read before embarking on The Dark Tower series which is strictly true. However before I read The Gunslinger I read the novella The Little Sisters of Eluria which is contained within the story collection Everything’s Eventual. The novella doesn’t take place chronologically before The Gunslinger, nevertheless it’s a brilliant taster of what is to come. It’s like a flash forward seen at the beginning Quentin Tarantino movie where chronology doesn’t matter and it just works. We are introduced to the Green Folk and I loved their description:

 “Slow mutants were, in his experience, creatures that loved the dark, almost like toadstools with brains, and he had never seen any such as these before.”

 

It was recommended on a forum that this novella should be read immediately before beginning The Dark Tower series and at this early stage of my journey to the Dark Tower, I think I would agree.

The Story

 

The Gunslinger, the smallest novel in the Dark Tower series, was surprisingly published originally as five novellas in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The first novella was published in 1978 and the final novella was published in 1981: it later was published as one novel in 1982. In 2003, the novel was reissued in a revised and expanded version with modified language and scenes that were added and changed intended to resolve inconsistencies with the later books in the series.

 

The Gunslinger

 

This novella begins with the gunslinger (who is nameless for quite a while) who is following the man in black (also nameless to begin with). If you do read The Little Sisters of Eluria or have done a bit of background reading, you will know that the gunslinger’s name is Roland Deschain, so although he is not referred to by name for the most part in this book, for the purposes of this blog, I will refer to him as Roland.

 

Roland is in the desert and comes a across a farmer who he stays with and tells him the story of what happened the last he came across people. We learn about the events that took place in Tull, the last town before the desert begins. Whilst in Tull, Roland comes across a saloon and quickly begins a fling with the bartender Allie. We learn the man in black had brought the town drunk Nort back from the dead. The man in black, calling himself Walter O’Dim, tells Allie that if she says a particular word to Nort

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he will tell her everything he saw and heard during his time in the afterlife. Roland senses this is a trapped and tells Allie not to say the word to Nort.

 

Roland next meets Sylvia Pittston in Tull who is a fanatical preacher and believes that the man in black has impregnated her with the offspring of the Crimson King. Sylvia warned her congregation to beware of the Gunslinger, referring to him as a malicious “Interloper”. She manages to stir up a frenzy leading the town to attack the Gunslinger including Allie because she had fallen into the trap by saying the word to Nort and went insane by the revelations.

 

This novella ends dramatically and demonstrates Roland’s cold-hearted and amoral nature. He manages to brutally kill all 58 residents of Tull. After he told Brown his story, the gunslinger fills his water skins and continues across the desert in pursuit of his quarry.

 

The Way Station

 

It is at the way station in the desert that Roland meets Jake Chambers for the first time. Under hypnosis, Jake remembers that he has recently been killed in his own world, New York City in 1977 when someone pushed him into traffic. Roland suspects that is was the man in black that was the cause of Jake’s death in his own world.

 

While searching the way station’s cellar for usable supplies, Roland meets a demon that speaks to him through a skeleton buried behind the wall. The demon warns him that the man in black will be able to use Jakes as an asset against him as long as the two are travelling together. On impulse, Roland takes the skeleton’s jawbone with him.

 

Roland and Jake set off into the desert, heading toward a mountain range where the man in black has gone. Along the way, Roland tells Jake about a training session under the severe regimen of his teacher Cort, who showed him how to use a hawk as a weapon; and how Roland and one of his best friends, Cuthbert Allgood, exposed the cook Hax as a traitor working for the Good Man and sent him to the gallows. Again, this passage represents that type of person Roland was and is, amoral and unrelatable.

 

The Oracle and the Mountains

 

Roland and Jake manage to make their way out of the desert into lusher territory. They come across a Speaking Ring. At night, Jake is drawn to the ring by the Oracle who seems to be a type of succubus and contained within the Ring. The Oracle attempts to drain Jake to death by sexual intercourse but Roland manages to save him.

 

Roland restrains Jake at their campsite and gives him the jawbone taken from the skeleton in the way station, as a means of warding off the Oracle’s influence. He then goes down to the Speaking Ring, taking mescaline (similar to LSD) to protect himself. When he reaches the Ring, he has a powerful psychosexual exchange with the Oracle, who tells him of Eddie Dean and Susannah Dean.

 

The next day they leave the campsite and eventually come to a mountain. The man in black is there, and taunts Roland, telling him they will speak on the other side. Roland asks Jake to make his choice as to whether he wishes to leave the gunslinger or accompany him, and Jake agrees to come with him, knowing that Roland plans to sacrifice him in order to reach the man in black.

 

It is in this novella that links The Dark Tower series to the second book, The Drawing of the

Three. Below is an extract from Chapter 5:

“Three. This is the number of your fate . . . Three stands at the heart of your quest. Another number comes later. Now the number is three . . . The boy is your gate to the man in black. The man in black is your gate to the three. The three are your way to the Dark Tower . . .”

 

The Slow Mutants

 

Roland and Jake make their way through a railway tunnel using a hand car cart created by the Great Old Ones. During this time, to distract the boy, Roland tells him a story of his childhood (which is also told in Wizard and Glass and The Gunslinger Born).

 

At age fourteen, Roland discovered his mother having an affair with his father’s court magician, Marten Broadcloak. Marten taunted Roland in order to spur him into an early trial to prove his worth as a gunslinger, in order that he would fail and be sent into exile, therefore ending potential trouble for the Good Man and Crimson King to whom Marten secretly swore allegiance. Roland faced his teacher Cort, using his hawk David as his weapon and deliberately sacrificing him in order to gain the upper hand, and passed the trial.

 

While traveling through the mountain, Roland and Jake are attacked by a pack of slow mutants, who block the track in an attempt to catch them. Jake clears the obstruction just in time for them to escape, and they travel on to the edge of a deep chasm spanned by a dilapidated trestle. They abandon the hand car and start crossing on foot. Nearing the other end, Jake slips and Roland catches him, but the man in black arrives to offer Roland a choice: let the boy die or never catch him. Roland lets Jake fall to his death and exits the tunnel with the man in black.

 

The Gunslinger and the Man in Black

 

The final apart is the a big reveal and appears to set the tone for the rest of the series.

 

After sacrificing Jake in the mountain, Roland makes his way down to speak to the man in black. The man reads Roland’s fate from a pack of Tarot cards, including “the sailor” (Jake), “the prisoner” (Eddie Dean) “the lady of shadows” (Susannah Dean), “death” (but not for Roland), and the Tower itself, as the center of everything. The man in black states that he is merely a pawn of Roland’s true enemy, the one who now controls the Dark Tower itself.

 

Roland attacks the man in black, who retaliates by knocking Roland out with an incantation. Roland enters a terrifying visionary hallucination revealing the nature of the cosmos. When Roland awakens, he finds that nothing is left of the man except his skeleton, and that he himself has aged ten years. He takes the skeleton’s jawbone with him as he departs, as a replacement for the one he had given to Jake in “The Oracle and the Mountains.”

 

The gunslinger continues traveling by foot until he reaches the Western Sea.

 

Extract from Chapter 5

. . . Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met in a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top, gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a Room? . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Although I have gone to quite a bit of effort breaking down The Gunslinger into its constituent parts, I really must include the ‘Argument’ which appears after the Introduction of The Drawing of the Three, the second book in The Dark Tower series. I found the Argument immensely helpful when I embark on my reading of the second book so I’d to share it here:

 

ARGUMENT

 

The Gunslinger tells how Roland, the last gunslinger of a world which has ‘moved on,’ finally catches up with the man in black . . . a sorcerer he has chased for a very long time – just how long we do not yet know. The man in black turns out to be a fellow named Walter, who falsely claimed the friendship of Roland’s father in those days before the world moved on.

Roland’s goal is not this half-human creature but the Dark Tower; the man in black – and, more specifically, what the man in black knows – is his first step on his road to that mysterious place.

Who, exactly, is Roland? What was his world like before it ‘moved on’? What is the Tower, and why does he pursue it? We have only fragmentary answers. Roland is a gunslinger, a kind of knight, one of those charged with holding a world Roland remembers as being ‘filled with love and light’ as it is’ to keep it from moving on.

We know that Roland was forced to an early trial of manhood after discovering that his mother had become the mistress of Marten, a much greater sorcerer than Walter (who, unknown to Roland’s father, is Marten’s ally); we know Marten has planned Roland’s discovery, expecting Roland to fail and to be ‘sent West’; we know that Roland triumphs in his test.

What else do we know? That the gunslinger’s world is not completely unlike our own. Artifacts such as gasoline pumps and certain songs (‘Hey Jude,’ for instance, or the bit of doggerel that begins ‘Beans, beans, the musical fruit . . .’) have survived; so have customs and rituals oddly like those from our own romanticized view of the American west.

And there is an umbilicus which somehow connects out world to the word of the gunslinger. At a way-station on a long-deserted coach-road in a great and sterile desert, Roland was, in fact, pushed from a street-corner by the ubiquitous (and iniquitous) man in black. The last thing Jake, who was on his way to school with his bookbag in one hand and his lunch-box in the other, remembers of his world – our world – is being crushed beneath the wheels of a Cadillac . . . and dying.

Before reaching the man in black, Jake dies again . . . this time because of th4e gunslinger, faced with the second-most agonizing choice in his life, elects to sacrifice this symbolic son. Given a choice between the Tower and child, possibly between damnation and salvation, Roland chooses the Tower.

‘Go, then,’ Jake tells him before plunging into the abyss. ‘There are other worlds than these.’

The final confrontation between Roland and Walter occurs in a dusty golgotha of decaying bones. The dark man tells Roland’s future with a deck of Tarot cards. These cards, showing a man called The Prisoner, a woman called The Lady of Shadows, and a darker shape that is simply Death (‘but not for you, gunslinger,’ the man in black tells him), and prophecies which become the subject of this volume . . . and Roland’s second trap on the long and difficult path to the Dark Tower.

The Gunslinger ends with Roland sitting upon the beach of the Western Sea, watching the sunset. The man in black is dead, the gunslinger’s own future course unclear; The Drawing of the Three begins on the same beach, less than seven hours later.

 

 

The Eyes of the Dragon – The Hobbit to The Dark Tower

This is the last novel I needed to read before embarking on The Dark Tower series. Connecting The Eyes of the Dragon to the series, I’ve heard it said it is what The Hobbit is to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I can’t say that I agree with this description yet, but this was my motivation to read The Eyes of the Dragon.

 

The Eyes of the Dragon is not like any other Stephen King book I’ve read. Both the genre and the style are starkly different to his predominantly ‘horror’ body of work.  The Eyes of the Dragon is definitely a child-friendly ‘crossover’ fantasy novel, a story that can be enjoyed by both children and adults. This is probably the only King novel that I’ve read so far that I would have no issues with my niece reading! Indeed it was written for his then-13-year-old daughter.

 

The novel was published the year I was born so unsurprisingly I didn’t get to experience the controversy this book created among fans of King. Many fans were angry and dismissed this book because it was completely different to his other work which goes to the heart of the issue of what kind of writer Stephen King is. King himself gets annoyed at simply being dismissed as a ‘horror writer’, but I suspect that the dismissals come from a place that dismisses the genre generally uses the term horror pejoratively way.

 

Stephen King is definitely a horror writer and this should be celebrated, there’s nothing pejorative about horror in my mind! Stephen King’s work however cannot simply fit into the horror genre: he is also a non-fiction writer, a science fiction writer, and for the purposes of this blog, a fantasy writer. I think it was unfair that he was heavily criticised by his fans for ‘genre-swapping’, because I think this exercise can improve a writer’s creativity overall and I think King has said this is the case for him.

 

Thank God (not dog) a lot of Stephen King fans did react angrily to The Eyes of the Dragon though. Without this reaction we wouldn’t have been graced with Misery: a book about a novelist whose fans won’t let him write anything other than what they know and love him for. A quick fun fact about Misery: King was going to publish Misery under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, but was ‘outed’ before Misery was published. Misery does definitely have a “Bachman Book” feel to it.

 

Having read some negative reviews about The Eyes of the Dragon, I have to say that they are generally looking at the book in isolation whilst simultaneously criticising it for not being horror. I think the reason why I enjoyed this book is because I firstly took this book for what it is, crossover fantasy but also because I had context for the book. Having read and loved The Stand, I developed an understanding and fascination for Randall Flagg, who is also the main villain in The Eyes of the Dragon. Without having a ‘Flagg background’, I can imagine some of this book’s significance may be lost: read The Stand before you read this!

 

The protagonist, Peter, is next in line to the throne of Delain. The King’s magician, Flagg, has the King under his thumb but is worried he won’t able to manipulate Peter in the same way when he would become King. Flagg plots a successful plan to poison the King and then frame Peter for the regicide.  Peter who is then convicted of regicide does not succeed to the throne, his younger brother Thomas does instead, and he is imprisoned in the Needle which is a tall tower (possibly a dark one?).

 

Peter devices a plan to escape the tower using threads from the napkins he receives for his meals to create a rope. The story goes into detail about how this ispossible – he was in the tower for 5 years having 3 meals a day so acquired quite a lot of thread. Peter in the tower slowly working on his escape conjured up an image for me that was a cross between Rapunzel and the Shawshank Redemption. Fun fact: The Eyes of the Dragon was originally titled Napkins.

 

An interesting part of the book was when Thomas’s butler Dennis would often spend the night with Thomas especially when he was drunk or upset. I read between the lines and if Thomas and Dennis were characters in the Game of Thrones, I think we would have got gritty debauched details of what they really got up to when Thomas needed comforting in the middle of the night. The ending of the book satisfied my speculative interest in Thomas and Dennis. When Peter is restored as King, Thomas decides to leave Delain to hunt down Flagg; Dennis decides to join Thomas and they “had many strange adventures.”

 

The classic fantasy tale has its place and The Eyes of the Dragon is definitely one of those tales. I would be interested though in an amalgamation of gritty, trippy debauched King set in an olde-worlde fantasy land. A Stephen King version of the Games of Thrones would be amazing. Who knows, I may discover this with the Dark Tower series!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dreamcatcher – Pennywise Lives (at 29 Neibolt Street)

It’s been a couple of months since I’ve read a Stephen King novel so choosing the next one read is an important decision. I chose to read Dreamcatcher, initially because it’s a “Derry book” but also this was the first book King wrote after his near-fatal accident in June 1999. What a relief it was when I started reading Dreamcatcher. It’s definitely a page turner as I read the book in a week, averaging 100 pages a day. Hodder & Stoughton categorizes Dreamcatcher as an “Epic Thriller” sharing the category with the likes of Insomnia, IT and The Stand and I would certainly suggest that this book is in the same league as those.

 

The book begins by setting the scene of four protagonists who are childhood friends: Jonesy, Henry, Pete and Beaver. Now they are grown up leading separate lives, they only meet up once a year to go on a hunting trip. You can fall into the trap by investing a keen interest in this quartet, however soon after the ground is laid, Pete and Beaver are killed off essentially leaving Jonesy and Henry as the main characters. This is a shame, perhaps a flaw, as you are left wondering what could have been or it’s a deliberate melancholy device as this book is very dark.

 

Like in most King books, telepathy plays an integral part in the story as the friends possess the power. As adults, the four are all going through a rough time: Jonesy has been in a near-fatal accident, shattering his hip (parodying King’s own accident), Henry is suicidal, Pete is on the cusp of admitting is alcoholism and Beaver is miserably loveless. As children, the four experienced a potentially traumatic event together: they came across a young boy with Down’s syndrome being tortured by sadistic teenage bullies. They managed to summon up the courage to rescue the boy who we find out is called Douglas Clavell, but affectionately called “Duddits” as this is how he pronounces his name. This experience begins a strong bond between the quartet and Duddits.

 

There are quite a few connections between Dreamcatcher and IT especially between the main characters. There is a connection with Pennywise however I will go into much more detail about that later. In IT, the Losers’ Club in 1958 battle IT in order to save the children of Derry. The memories of these events are supernaturally repressed by the Losers’ Club and they go on to be remarkably successful adults with the exception of Mike Hanlon who is the only one who remained in Derry.

 

Both the Losers’ Club and the friends in Dreamcatcher battled a traumatic event with heroism however the consequences for the characters as adults are quite different. In Dreamcatcher, the heroic event of saving Duddits reverberates through the book and casts a dark shadow on their adult lives. On a few occasions, a character will state that saving Duddits was their finest hour. This is seemingly positive affirmation however the friends spend their lives unable to live up the purity and kindness of who they were when they were children. Perhaps it was the supressed memories of the Losers’ Club that made them successful adults.

 

Now that the protagonists have been mentioned, it’s time to introduce the antagonists: the aliens. Whilst on their hunting trip, the friends soon discover that eating or inhaling the red mold found in the woods causes large worm-like aliens called byrum (derived from the name of the alien mold ‘byrus’) to infest the host. When an infestation is sufficiently established, the host develops a form of telepathy with other infested individuals. The adult aliens resemble deformed serpent-like beings with legs, while the younger aliens, or byrum – nicknamed “shit-weasels” because they can be created in a host organism’s stomach and escape by eating their host’s body between the stomach and anus – are legless, smaller versions of the adult alien.

 

The adult aliens are capable of not only telepathy, but the ability to give those around them telepathic abilities. They can also manipulate the minds of those around them. They use this power to appear as “Gray Boys”. “Gray Boys” look nearly identical to the stereotypical grey alien look, but with pus-like skin. Gray Boys may spontaneously explode in a cloud of red dust for two reasons: if near death, or as one final attempt to spread the infection.

 

PENNYWISE LIVES

 

The main alien protagonist is unimaginatively called Mr Gray.  Jonesy is uniquely affected by the byrus: instead of being infected with the red growth or the implants, an adult alien possesses his body. Mr Gray inhabits Jonesy, attempting to use him to carry out its mission to infect the town water supply with byrus to eventually conquer planet earth. Therefore Mr Gray is desperate to find the standpipe in Derry in order infect the water. Jonesy is acutely aware of this so tries to hide his memories of Derry and Duddits from Mr Gray. It is the journey of Jonesy, possessed by Mr Gray, where we come across the reference to Pennywise:

 

Extracts from Chaper Sixteen: Derry

“‘Where is it?’ Mr Gray screamed into the howling mouth of the storm. ‘Where’s the fucking STANDPIPE?’

There was no need for Jonesy to shout; storm or no storm, Mr Gray would hear even a whisper.

‘Ha-ha, Mr Gray,’ he said. ‘Hardy-fucking-har. Looks like the joke’s on you. The Standpipe’s been gone since 1985.’”

 

…

 

“He, it, whatever Mr Gray was, at last reached the pedestal, which stood out clearly enough in the glow cast by the Ram’s headlights. It had been built to a child’s height about five feet, and of the plan rock which had shaped so many New England stone walls. On top were two figures cast in bronze, a boy and a girl with their hands linked and their heads lowered, as if in prayer or in grief.

            The pedestal was drifted to most of its height in snow, but the top of the plaque screwed to the front was visible. Mr Gray fell to Jonesy’s knees, scraped snow away, and read this:

 

TO THOSE LOST IN THE STORM

MAY 31, 1985

AND TO THE CHILDREN

ALL THE CHILDREN

LOVE FROM BILL, BEN, BEV,

EDDIE, RICHIE, STAN, MIKE

THE LOSERS’ CLUB

 

Spray-painted across it in jagged red letters, also perfectly visible in the truck’s headlights, was this further message:

 

PENNYWISE LIVES

 

Mr Gray knelt looking at this for nearly five minutes, ignoring the creeping numbness in Jonesy’s extremities. (And why would he take care? Jonesy was just your basic rental job, drive it as hard as you want and butt out your cigarettes on the floormat.) He was trying to make sense of it. Storm? Children? Losers? Who or what was Pennywise? Most all, where was the Standpipe, which Jonesy’s memories had insisted was here?”

 

…

 

“The years of 1984 and ’85 were bad ones in Derry. In the summer of 1984, three local teenagers had thrown a gay man into the Canal, killing him. In the ten months which followed, half a dozen children had been murdered, apparently by a psychotic who sometime masqueraded as a clown.

            ‘Who is this John Wayne Gacey?’ [sic] Mr Gray asked. ‘Was he the one who killed the children?’

            ‘No, just someone from the midwest who had a similar modus operandi,’ Jonesy said. ‘You don’t understand many of the cross-connections my mind makes, do you? Bet there aren’t many poets out where you come from.’

            Mr Gray made no reply to this. Jonesy doubted if he knew what a poet was. Or cared.

            ‘In any case,’ Jonesy said, ‘the last bad thing to happen was a kind of a freak hurricane. It hit on May thirty-first, 1985. Over sixty people died. The Standpipe blew over. It rolled down that hill and into Kansas Street.’ He pointed to the right of the truck, where the land slopped sharply away into the dark.”

 

I wanted to provide these extracts because when I read this chapter, this was the first time I found out that Pennywise was actually modelled on an actual serial killer! I just want to make a quick point before I write about the serial killer. The last quoted paragraph refers to a “freak hurricane” resulting in the standpipe blowing over rolling down “Kansas Street” – I wonder is it end up somewhere over the rainbow way up high?

 

So in the extract referring to Pennywise, John Wayne Gacy is mentioned, in Jonesy’s mind, he had a similar modus operandi as Pennywise the Clown. As soon as I read this passage, I immediately had to google “John Wayne Gacy” and it was utterly amazing: reading about him really does shed light on Pennywise.

 

John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and paedophile rapist who was convicted or the sexual assault and murder of a minimum of 33 teenage boys and young men in a series of killings committed between 1972 and 1978. All of Gacy’s murders were committed inside the Norwood Park Township just as all of Pennywise’s murders were committed in Derry. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home, 3 further victims were buried elsewhere on his property (totalling 29 within the property), whilst the last 4 known victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River (totalling 33 known murders overall).

 

There is a book written about John Wayne Gacy titled, “29 Below” by Jeff Rignall and Ron Wilder. This got me thinking about the house where IT appears: 29 Neibolt Street. In the book IT, the Losers’ Club go to 29 Neibolt Street to confront IT however the creature disappears into the sewers through a toilet pipe. Near the beginning of the book, the mutilated corpe of a gay man named Adrian Mellon is found from the canal. To be honest, this is what fascinated me the most from Dreamcatcher, the revelation made about Pennywise being modelled on John Wayne Gacy.

 

Interview

 

When I’m preparing to write a blog about or reviewing a Stephen King book, if the book has been adapted into a film, I’ll try to watch it soon after I’ve finished reading the book. This is exactly what I did with Dreamcatcher and I would only recommend watching this film once you have finished the book. I’ve heard people who have blogged about Dreamcatcher to NOT watch the film but I have to disagree. The film did get terrible reviews and just about broke even at the box office but I think this film cannot be appreciated without having read the book so the viewer has context for what they are watching.

 

The film was directed and, produced and co-written by Lawrence Kasdan. In a 2012 interview, during a promotional tour for his film Darling Companion, Kasdan admitted that the commercial failure of Dreamcatcher left him:

 “Wounded careerwise . . . But not so much personally. I’ve been personally wounded by other movies, where I’d written it, and thought, ‘Oh, God, the world’s not interested in what I’m interested in.’ With Dreamcatcher, the career was hurt. I was planning to do The Risk Pool with Tom Hanks. I had written the script from a great book by Richard Russo (Nobody’s Fool). And it didn’t happen. Then another one didn’t happen. Meanwhile, two years have passed here, two have passed there. That’s how you’re wounded.”

 

A fun fact to put this movie into contemporary entertainment, Lawrence Kasdan is the writer and producer for the new Star Wars movies with Episode VII being released next year. I’m glad I bought the Dreamcatcher DVD as it contains a fantastic interview with Stephen King in the special features. I thought the interview was so good, I decided to type out a transcript of the interview verbatim and here it is:

 

‘I had a road accident in June of 1999. I was out on my afternoon walk, and a guy came long in a van. He was trying to deal with animals in the back of his van without stopping, so was turned around, and he hit me and it was serious. I broke most of the ribs on the right side of my body. Fractured hip, fractured pelvis, tibia fractured in nine or 10 places. Really, the guy described this area of my leg . . . from knee to ankle, as so many marbles in a sack.

 

‘When I got started on Dreamcatcher, I couldn’t really work on a word processor because it was too uncomfortable to sit at my desk for any period of time. But I wanted to write because it’s my drug. It takes me away. When I’m writing, I’m in another world. You don’t feel the pain or anything for that period of time that you’re writing. So I had a bunch of ledger books, and I wrote the book longhand.

 

‘I’ve had people say to me: “I don’t understand why you wanna write horror stories all the time.” And my reaction is, “I don’t write horror stories all the time.” I write stories the way that any novelist does about the relationships that people have with one another and the interactions that have with one another.

 

‘I wanted to write a story that was pretty much set in one cabin. I want to write a story about guys and what guys are like when they are on their own, and I visualised a hunting camp. And I really wanted to write an old-fashioned monster story, an invasion-from-space-type story.

 

‘But the other thing that I wanted to do with Dreamcatcher is, what you’re looking for if you write stories that are scary, you’re looking for the taboo zone. You’re looking for a place where ordinarily the door is closed and we don’t go beyond that door. And it used to be that the taboo zone was the bedroom but eventually the movies got beyond the bedroom door and I thought to myself, “Well, is there a door that’s still closed anymore?” And the answer was: “Yes, it’s true. The bathroom door is a place that we don’t go anymore.” And I started to think about the bathroom as being a room where really, a lot of nasty discoveries are made.

I would guess that probably 60 to 70 percent of our first realisation that maybe we have a tumour, we have cancer, that sort of thing, happens in the bathroom. You’ve done your number one or your number two, and you look in the bowl and there’s blood. And you say, “Uh-oh, I’ve got a problem.” You can say IO wrote the whole book in order to have the scene where he sits on the toilet and can’t get off because the thing is inside. It won’t go down because it’s too big to flush. In a way, it was that that became the driving force of the book. It’s gonna do for the toilet what Psycho did for the shower.

 

‘I don’t think that it’s by accident that when you see Dreamcatcher there are scenes in that movie that call up Stand By Me because when kids do something together that gives them a common memory, they have more of a tendency to stay together. So I wanted to write a story about some boys who had done something really extraordinary when they were young. And together they have a secret. Something they’re done that they just don’t talk about, a sort of psychic link, a psychic bond.

 

‘I always said to myself: “Well, if you were taken over by an alien force, what happens to your mind?” I think that in most cases the mind would simply be absorbed by the more powerful creature. But because I wanted my guys to sort of stand against these aliens and because they’ve had this encounter with this remarkable young man named Duddits, I thought to myself, “Well, maybe this guy’s got a place to go.” And then I thought to myself, “Well, where would you go to escape the presence, the possessing presence?” And I thought, “Your mind really is a little bit like a storehouse.”  It’s a place where you have all these different cabinets. So I was able to visualise Jonesy running away into his own subconscious. But he has this one room where Mr Gray, the alien, can’t get in.

 

‘It’s a quantum leap from book to film. When it’s the book, it’s just me. I run all railroads. I’m the casting director, because I’m the cast, right? I’m the director, I’m the screenwriter, I’m everything. You’re always excited when you go in to see how someone is going to realise for the screen a story that you saw only behind your eyes, in your mind that you are only visualizing and translating with the pen or the word processor. It’s always exciting. The last thing I thought of before I went to bed last night was, “I’m gonna see Dreamcatcher tomorrow and then I’ll know if it’s bad, if it’s good, if it’s indifference.” Thank God it’s good.

 

‘Sometimes I go back and read the books over. Once you get beyond a certain point, five, six, seven years after a book has been published, it seems more like something that was written by somebody else. And then you almost read it as a novel by another writer. We’re doing this interview in the year 2002, the fall of 2002. Come back and ask me what I think of it as a novel around the year 2009 and if I’m still around, I’ll read it and tell you.’

The Talisman – Jack found it, I didn’t

My goal for 2014 is to read The Dark Tower series and also the other books that tie into it. One of those books that tie into the series is Black House, first published in 2001. I stumbled over a copy in a charity shop and bought it knowing this was on my reading list. As I did some background reading on the book, I soon found out that Black House is the sequel to The Talisman, first published in 1984. Although I have not read that The Talisman accompanies The Dark Tower series, I thought for completeness, I should read it.   

I have later found out that The Talisman was not intended to be a connection with The Dark Tower series however it was through the sequel, Black House that presents a soft-retcon (retroactive continuity); the Territories featured in The Talisman are a parallel to All-World ( . . . I am yet to understand this Dark Tower concept.)

Like Black House, The Talisman was not only written by Stephen King, it was a collaboration with Peter Straub. The story starts off simple enough, focusing on 12-year-old Jack Sawyer. At the beginning of the story, Jack Sawyer’s father has recently died and his unstable mother has uprooted him from California, where he was brought up, to begin a supposedly new life in New Hampshire staying in a hotel. Wasn’t Stephen King uprooted by his mother when his father abandoned the family and then returned and settled in Maine when he was around 11 in 1957 – 1958 . . .?

Jack Sawyer’s mother didn’t organise for him to start school so he is left making his own entertainment. He meets a handyman named Lester “Speedy” Parker who teaches him all about another world that we can’t see: a parallel version of our own, known as the Territories. Jack Sawyer’s mum is ill and it transpires that she is dying of cancer. Jack’s new knowledge of the Territories enables him to go on a quest to find something that can save his mother – The Talisman. Didn’t Stephen King’s mother have a drawn out battle with cancer which was eventually the cause of her death . . .?

The Territories is a curious land, time and distance have different meanings; it is more like a compressed version of America. Everyone in one world has a “twinner” in the other: sharing some of each other’s physical traits, life events and character. Jack however does not have a one, because his twinner, Jason, died when he was a baby. Jack’s mother has a twinner, Queen Laura DeLoessian, who has fallen into a deep sleep in the Territories and cannot be aroused. It is Speedy’s twinner, Parkus, who tells Jack about a talisman that can heal his mother and so begins Jack’s quest to find the talisman to save his dying mother.

Jack’s quest is similar to Frodo’s; there is even a moment in the story where Jack goes to the cinema to watch Lord of the Rings. After reading reviews about The Talisman after reading it, apparently the story was primarily influenced by Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Unfortunately I have not read Huckleberry Finn so was unable to appreciate its influence on the book. I should get round to reading it though, I think it’s one of those books you should read in your lifetime.

I have to be honest and say that I really struggled getting through this book. Don’t get me wrong, I love dreamy, trippy, out-there literature, but some parts of this book I just didn’t get which was frustrating. If you’re not gripped, it can take the enjoyment out of getting through a book which is what I experienced. Perhaps as I read more Stephen King and understand more of the Dark Tower mythos and where the story is coming from, I may gain a new appreciation like I did with ’salems Lot, but a first instance it was tough reading.

James Smythe writes a Stephen King blog for the Guardian which I would definitely recommend. He is re-reading King’s books and blogging about them in chronological order and is currently up to The Dark Tower III. I must admit I was relieved when I read his blog on The Talisman. He blogged that there were passages he just didn’t get: Wolf in our world; the Blasted Lands; The Black Hotel.

At this stage of my Stephen King reading, I would have to say that I enjoyed The Talisman the least. That’s not to say there were not enjoyable parts and it wasn’t well written, but there were too many drawn out parts that I just didn’t get which affected my overall view of the book. I’m glad I’ve read it, I want to eventually read every Stephen King book and perhaps my reading of The Talisman will be of use when I read Black House which is the next King book on my list.

I am including an extract of The Talisman in this blog, the dates 1957 – 1958 keep on cropping out in King’s books and I am keen to document them.

Extract from Chapter Ten, Part Five

“The Elroy-thing snarled and came toward him, now unsteady and awkward on its rear, its clothes bulging in all the wrong places, its tongue swinging from its fanged mouth. Here was the vacant lot behind Smokey Updike’s Oatley Tap, yes, here it was at last, choked with weeds and blown trash – a rusty bedspring here, the grilled of a 1957 Ford over there, and a ghastly sickle moon like a bent bone in the sky overhead, turning every shard of broken glass into a dead staring eye, and this hadn’t begun in New Hampshire, had it?”

Insomnia (will take you to other worlds)

Prologue

 

I have read quite a few negative reviews about Insomnia, equally I’ve read some very positive ones. Among King fans this is a book that seems to be either loved or hated. Those who love this book are probably hardcore fans of the Dark Tower series. Generally I think this shows that King fans can be divided into Dark Tower fans and non-Dark Tower fans.

 

I have not read The Dark Tower series but I certainly want to. I have therefore done a bit of research into what books I should read before embarking on starting the series. Insomnia is one of those books. What was also appealing to me was Insomnia is sort of a sequel to IT which at present remains my favourite King book.

 

There were parts of Insomnia where I had to push myself to carry on reading, however I’m glad I persisted as it was incredibly rewarding. It had made me even more excited to start reading The Dark Tower series. I wanted one of the uses for King of Macabre to be resource where I can refer back to. Therefore I am using this blog not really as a review but more of a resource that flags what I think are crucially important passages that Insomnia contain.

 

My last comment before I quote passages and in effect annotate them, I want to say that I loved the abortion debate theme which is still a very live debate in America today. The way the theme was portrayed was excellent and it reminded me of the film Citizen Ruth – if you haven’t seen it, you must!

 

Introduction

 

Why Insomnia? Because insomnia is a mechanism that can alter one’s state of consciousness, one’s perception. There are other mechanisms which make it possible for one’s state of consciousness to be altered; children

                (The Losers’ Club)

                for example are far more susceptible to having their state of consciousness altered than adults. Stephen King’s Insomnia is about two senior citizens, Ralph Roberts and Lois Chasse, who are thrown into a deeper level of conscious because of their shared insomnia.

 

                Ralph Roberts begins to suffer insomnia after the death of his wife. As his conditions worsens, he sees things invisible and intangible to others, colorful manifestations of life-force surrounding people which he discovers are their auras. Ralph later sees “little bald doctors”, based on their appearance. These visions are Ralph perceiving other planes of reality and their influence upon the “real” world. Ralph’s friend Lois Chasse who has also been widowed is suffering with insomnia too. They eventually find out their insomnia was induced by two of the little bald doctors. Ralph and Lois are needed to defeat the agents of the Crimson King.

 

The little bald doctors

 

There are three little bald doctors. They don’t have names, but in order to communicate with Ralph and Lois, they name themselves after the Moirai (the Fates) of Greek mythology: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. We learn this in the extract below from Chapter seventeen:

 

“We don’t have names, not the way Short-Timers do – but you may call us after the fates in the story this man has already told you. That these names originally belonged to women means little to us, since we are creatures with no sexual dimension. I will be Clotho, although, I spin no thread, and my colleague and old friend will be Lachesis, although he shakes no rods and has never thrown coins . . . Your friend [Bill McGovern] belongs to the other, to the third. To the one Ralph has already named Atropos. But Atropos couldn’t tell you the exact hour of the man’s death no more than we could. He cannot even tell whom he will take next.”

 

The four constants and their agents

 

We find out from Clotho and Lachesis:

“First, know that there are only four constants in this area of existence where your lives and ours, the lives of the [unintelligible] overlap. The four constants are Life, Death, the Purpose, and the Random. All these have meaning for you, but you now have a slightly different concept of Life and Death . . . Lachesis and I are agents of Death. This makes us figures of dread to most Short-Timers; even those who pretend to accept us and our function are usually afraid. In pictures we are sometimes shown as a fearsome skeleton or a hooded figure whose face cannot be seen . . .

“But we are not only agents of death, Ralph and Lois; we are also agents of the Purpose. And now you must listen closely, for I would not be misunderstood. There are those of your kind who feel that everything happens by design, and there are those who feel all events are simply a matter of luck or chance. The truth is that life is both random and on purpose, although not in equal measure . . .

“[Atropos] is an agent of the Random. We, Lachesis and I, serve that other force, the one which accounts for most events in both individual lives and in life’s wider stream. On your level of the building, Ralph and Lois, every creature is a Short-Time creature, and has an appointed span. There is no such thing as natural death, not really. Our job is purposeful death. We take the old and the sick, but we take others, as well. Just yesterday, for instance, we took a young man of twenty-eight.”

[Extracts from Chapter seventeen]

 

From the above extracts we have learnt that the four constants (Life, Death, The Purpose, and the Random) have agents to administer their will. Clotho and Lachesis are agents of two constants, Death and the Purpose, and Atropos is an agent of the Random.

 

Levels of existence

 

                We find out from Clotho:

“Be content with this: beyond the Short-Time levels of existence and the Long-Time levels on which Lachesis, Atropos and I exist, there are yet other levels. These are inhabited by creatures we could call All-Timers, beings which are either eternal or so close to it as make no difference. Short-Timers and Long-Timers live in overlapping spheres of existence – on connected floors of the same building, if you like – ruled by the Random and the Purpose. Above these floors, inaccessible to us but very much part of the same tower of existence, live other beings. Some of them marvellous and wonderful; others are hideous beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone yours. These beings might be called the Higher Purpose and the Higher Random . . . or perhaps there is Random beyond a certain level; we suspect that may be the case, but we have no real way of telling. We do know that it is something from one of these higher levels that has interested itself in Ed, and that something else up there made a countermove. That countermove is you, Ralph and Lois.”

[Extract from Chapter eighteen]

 

The Purpose: Ralph and Lois

 

Lois: How did you get us up to this level in the first place? It was insomnia, wasn’t it?

Lachesis: Essentially, yes. We’re able to make certain small changes in Short-Time auras. These adjustments caused a rather special form of insomnia that altered that way you dream and the way you perceive the waking world. Adjusting Short-Time auras is delicate, frightening work. Madness is always a danger . . .

Atropos knew that the Higher Purpose would send someone to try to change what he had set in motion, and now he knows who. But you must not allow yourselves to be sidetracked by Atropos; you must remember that he is little more than a pawn on this board. It is not Atropos who really opposes you . . .

[Extracts from Chapter seventeen]

 

“Under ordinary circumstances, we don’t interfere with Atropos, nor he with us. We couldn’t interfere with him even if we wanted to; the Random and the Purpose are like the red and clack squares on a checkerboard, defining each other by contrast. But Atropos does want to interfere with the way things operate – interfering is, a very real sense, what he was made to do – and on rare occasions, the opportunity to do in a really big way presents itself.

“Efforts to stop his meddling are rare . . . and are made only if the situation into which he intends to meddle is a very delicate one, where many serious matters are balanced and counterbalanced. This is one of those situations. Atropos has severed a life-cord he would have done will to leave alone. This will cause terrible problems on all levels, not to mention a serious imbalance between the Random and the Purpose, unless the situation is rectified. We cannot deal with what’s happening; the situation has passed far beyond our skills. We can no longer see clearly, let alone act. Yet in this case our inability to see hardly matters, because on the end, only Short-Timers can oppose the will of Atropos. That is why you two are here . . .

“[It] is Ed Deepneau’s cord Atropos cut. We don’t know this because we have seen it – we’ve passed beyond our ability to see clearly, as I said – but because it is only the logical conclusion. Deepneau is undesignated, neither of the Random nor the Purpose, that we do know, and he must have been some sort of master-cord to have caused all this uproar and concern. The very fact that he has lived so long after his life-cord was severed indicates his power and importance. When Atropos severed his cord, he set a terrible chain of events in motion . . .”

[Extracts from Chapter eighteen]

 

Clotho and Lachesis were therefore able to communicate with Ralph and Lois through a special form of insomnia in order to help them stop Atropos as it is only Short-Timers that can oppose his will. Because Atropos cut Ed Deepneau’s life-cord, this created havoc as Ed Deepneau is not designated to the Purpose not to the Random.

 

The Great One: Patrick Danville

 

Clotho: Every now and again a man or woman comes along whose life will affect not just those about him or her, or even all those who live in the Short-Time world, but those on many levels above and below the Short-Time world. These people are the Great Ones, and their lives always serve the Purpose. If they are taken too soon, everything changes. The scales cease to balance. Can you imagine, for instance, how different the world might be today if Hitler had drowned in the bathtub as a child? You may believe the world would be better for that, but I can tell you that the world would not exist at all if this had happened.  Suppose Winston Churchill had died of food-poisoning before he ever became Prime Minister. Suppose Augustus Caesar had been born dead, strangled on his own umbilicus? Yet the person we want you to save is of far greater importance than any of these.

Ralph: Dammit, Lois and I already saved this kid once! Didn’t that close the books, return him to the Purpose?

Lachesis: Yes, but he is not safe from Ed Deepneau, because Deepneau has no designation in either Random of Purpose. Of all the people on earth, only Deepneau can harm him before his time comes. If Deepneau fails, the boy will be safe again – he will pass his time quietly until his moment comes and he steps upon the stage to play his brief but crucially important part.

Ralph: One life means so much, then?

Lachesis: Yes. If the child dies, the Tower of all existence will fall, and the consequences of such a fall are beyond comprehension. And beyond ours, as well.

[Extracts from Chapter twenty-seven]

 

Patrick Danville cannot, for undisclosed reasons, be killed directly by anyone born under either the Random or the Purpose. However, from time to time a being is born who is “undesignated”. An undesignated person is described as being like a blank card, and is up for grabs by either side. Deepneau is one such person, in fact the only person on earth at that time of undesignated status.

 

The Crimson King

 

Crimson King: I be the Queenfish! I be loud and I be proud! I got the walk and I got the talk! Actually, I can be whatever I want. You may not know it, but shape-changing is a time-honoured custom in Derry.

 

A sudden rush of force blew past him in a fan of wind and fading green light. He caught a strange, skewed glimpse of the Crimson King, no longer handsome and no longer young but ancient and twisted and less human than the strangest creature to ever flop or hop its way along the Short-Time level of existence. Then something above opened revealing darkness shot through with conflicting swirls and rays of colour. The wind seemed to blow the Crimson King up toward it, like a leaf in a chimney-flue. The colours began to brighten, and Ralph turned his face away, raising one hand to shield his eyes. He understood that if he looked for long into that brightening glow, those

                (deadlights)

                Swirling colours, then death would be not the worst thing that could happen to him but the best. He did not just squeeze his eyes shut; he squeezed his mind shut. 

                A moment later everything was gone – the creature which had identified itself to Ed as the Crimson King, the kitchen in the old house on Richmond Street, his mother’s rocking chair.

[Extracts from Chapter Twenty-Nine]

 

From the above extracts, my current hypothesis (I have not yet read The Dark Tower series) is that the Crimson King is the same entity as IT, Pennywise the Dancing Clown. In Insomnia, the Crimson King shape-shifted into a catfish which related to a childhood fear for Ralph Roberts. He then said, “. . . shape-changing is a time-honoured custom in Derry.” This reference to me is the Crimson King saying he is the same entity as IT.

 

The second extract refers to the “deadlights”. In the book IT, we find out that ITs natural form exists in a realm beyond the physical, which IT calls the “deadlights”. Also in the book Bill Denbrough comes dangerously close to seeing the deadlights, but successfully defeats It before this happens. As such, the deadlights are never seen, and Its true form outside the physical realm is never revealed, only described as writhing, destroying orange lights.

 

Coming face to face with the deadlights drives any living being instantly insane (a Lovecraftian device). The only known person to face the deadlights and survive is Audra Phillips. In the above extract, Ralph intuitively understood that he should not look at the deadlights produced by the Crimson King as the passage implies it would turn him insane. At the very least, these extracts show that IT and the Crimson King are in some way connected.

 

The Dark Tower

 

Try to think of life as a kind of building, Ralph – what you would call a skyscraper . . . You and Lois and all the other Short-Time creatures live on the first two floors of this structure. Of course there are elevators . . . but Short-Timers are not allowed to use them under ordinary circumstances . . .

[Extract from Chapter seventeen]

 

[Sonia] had known for two years that Patrick was what the child psychologist called a prodigy, and she sometimes told herself she had gotten used to his sophisticated drawings and the Play-Doh sculptures he called the Clay Family. Perhaps she even had some degree, but particular picture gave her a strange, deep chill that could not entirely dismiss as emotional fallout from her long and stressful day.

‘Who’s that?’ she asked, tapping the tiny figure peering jealously down from the top of the dark tower.

‘Him’s the Red King.’ Patrick said.

‘Oh, the Red King, I see. And who’s this man with the guns?’

As he opened his mouth to answer, Roberta Harper, the woman at the podium lifted her arm (there was a black mourning band on it) toward the woman sitting behind her. ‘My friends, Ms Susan Day!’ she cried, and Patrick Danville’s answer to her mother’s second question was lost in the rising storm of applause.

Him’s name is Roland, Mama, I dream about him, sometimes. Him’s a King, too.

 

Three minutes later they excited into the fireshot night perfectly unscathed, and upon all the levels of the universe, matters both Random and Purposeful resumed their ordained courses. Worlds which had trembled for a moment in their orbits now steadied, and in one of those worlds, in a desert that was the apotheosis of all deserts, a man named Roland turned over in his bedroll and slept easily once again beneath the alien constellations.

[Extracts from Chapter thirty]

 

                I have already stated that I have not yet read The Dark Tower series however I want to read the series, I am very conscious of its importance. I know that Roland Deschain is the main antagonist. I think the lesson from reading the above extracts that The Darker Tower is everything, the Macroverse, including all the various dimensions. Insomnia has introduced me to Patrick Danville who I imagine will be significant in the Dark Tower series and to the Crimson King who appears to be an antagonist of the Dark Tower series.

 

Free Will and the Purpose

Clotho: First, you must understand that the things which are happening, while unexpected and distressing, are not precisely unnatural. My colleague and I do what we are made to do; Atropos does what he was made to do; and you, my Short-Time friends, will do what you were made to do. 

 

Ralph: There goes freedom of choice, I guess.

 

Lachesis: You mustn’t think so! It’s simply that what you call freedom of choice is part of what we call ka, the great wheel of being . . .

 

Lois: How did you get us up to this level in the place? It was insomnia, wasn’t it?

 

Lachesis: Essentially, yes. We’re able to make certain small changes in Short-Time auras. These adjustments caused a rather special form of insomnia that altered that way you dream and the way you perceive the waking world. Adjusting Short-Time auras is delicate, frightening work. Madness is always a danger . . .

 

Atropos knew that the Higher Purpose would send someone to try to change what he had set in motion, and now he knows who. But you must not allow yourselves to be sidetracked by Atropos; you must remember that he is little more than a pawn on this board. It is not Atropos who really opposes you . . .

[Extracts from Chapter seventeen]

 

                The above extract shows there is still free will under the four constants, it is not pure predestination. We are introduced to the concept of the Ka, the great wheel of being.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joyland – fabulously throwback noir

With very few exceptions, Stephen King’s books in Britain are published by Hodder & Stoughton and at the beginning of these books contain a very long list of Stephen King books they have published.  When I first began reading King, I made the rooky mistake of assuming that this very long list contained every King book available but this is not the case. Joyland is one of those exceptions to the Hodder & Stoughton general rule as it was published by Hard Case Crime.

I only realised that there were other King books when I decided to read about Joyland before it was published in June 2013. In my research, I discovered that Joyland was the second book he published with Hard Case Crime; the first was The Colorado Kid which of course is not contained in the very long at the beginning of a Hodder & Stoughton King book. The TV series Haven was based on The Colorado Kid first published in 2005 with the fourth season airing in September 2013.

Joyland is an amusement park which I think is brilliant setting for a Stephen King story. When I was reading about Joyland before it came out, I found out that The Shining was originally going to be called “Dark Shine” and the setting was going to be an amusement park in the off-season as opposed to the Overlook Hotel. The cover of Joyland was released before the book, and as the cliché goes “never judge a book by its cover” should apply however the cover is fabulously throwback noir – very enticing!

The book was for Hard Case Crime and has a retro feel to it. Because of this, Stephen King came to the controversial decision not to release it as an eBook. King is not a luddite, his other books are available as eBooks, but he wanted to release the book in the tradition the book is set in, this why it was only released in paperback as opposed to hardback first. King’s thought was also to get readers to have to go into a bookstore, if necessarily reacquaint themselves with the bookstore, in order to access it which I can go along with.

Joyland has been described as a “whodunit” and “a story about growing up and growing old” by Charles Ardai, the Hard Case Crime editor, who noted the ending made him cry. Well personally I wouldn’t go that far regarding the ending but it was satisfying. Joyland is an easy short read with a satisfying overall outcome. I’ve never read a “whodunit” story before, and to be honest, with this story I wasn’t extremely curious who the murderer was.

Finishing Joyland was satisfying but it is by no means King’s best work, in fact this could be considered really as a short story. Having been terribly excited about the setting, I was disappointed that the amusement park wasn’t utilized as much as I would have liked. The setting had a lot of potential then again this book was for the specific genre for Hard Case Crime. I think King should come back to the amusement park setting, not with a “whodunit” story, but a more chilling supernatural one – possibly with clowns!

We are All Under the Dome

2013: The year I began King of Macabre which uncannily coincided with a lot of Stephen King related releases, some that before I started this I was unaware of. My goal with King of Macabre is to read and review everything related to Stephen King so I began with his first books. However, as 2013 has been a year full of Stephen King releases, I also wanted to read and review his latest books, tackling his work from both sides as it were.

After I read Doctor Sleep I had the choice of either reading Joyland (also released 2013) or Under the Dome. I had only heard about Under the Dome because it was adapted into a TV series that premiered in June 2013. It was recommended to me when I started this blog that I should read Under the Dome as the TV series would be airing. I didn’t have any pre-conceived notions about Under the Dome apart from hearing positive commentary. Therefore unlike the sequel to The Shining, I wasn’t necessarily eager to read it.

The day I finished reading Doctor Sleep, I held Joyland and Under the Dome in my hands and I really could have gone either way but decided in the end to go epic, so I went with Under the Dome. By a weird coincidence, I started reading on 21 October and that’s the same date when the book starts – it was meant to be! Well, I am so glad that by starting this blog in 2013, it led me to read Under the Dome because it’s a definite Stephen King must read.

Although only published in 2009, this book for me is classic King. You hear that King’s early work is much better than his most recent, but this is definitely not the case with Under the Dome and after reading it, it is definitely one of my favourites. It probably has the classic feel to it because King has stated that he came up with the original concept in 1976. It’s not that often that I read a book and I literally cannot put it down, this was the case with Under the Dome. I consumed the book in just over two weeks and with over 1000 pages, I can only compare the experience to reading It, so for me makes this book Stephen King pedigree.

Reading Doctor Sleep immediately before Under the Dome, I can now say the overall vibe of Doctor Sleep is different from his earlier work. As Doctor Sleep was the first book I read of King’s from the 21^st century, I blogged that perhaps King’s work in the 21^st century is perhaps tamer – smoking doesn’t play a role nor does the word nigger crop up which are ingredients of classic King. I have to now take back the 21^st century analysis part because the feel of this book is similar to his early books.

I also commented that I found that Doctor Sleep was nearly endanger of being preachy – nearly. One of the characters in Under the Dome proves that King does not have a preachy agenda and that’s Sam Verdreaux. Sam represents the randomness and seemingly unfairness of the human condition– it does not follow that if you lead a good and healthy life, you’ll end up living long and healthy. Sam is a heavy smoker and drinker, towards the end of people hundreds are people die because of the pollution under the dome, however Sam is one of the last survivors (although does eventually die).

This book had the potential with its overall theme as King used writing this book as an opportunity to write about the serious ecological problems we face today, the dome being a metaphor for the planet – we are all under the dome. King managed to avoid even a hint of a preachy message in my opinion.

My favourite Stephen King book so far is It for many reasons. I am happy to be corrected, but I don’t think It is described as epic in the same way as The Stand is. I therefore distinguish It with his epic work and I would say that Under the Dome equals if not out shines The Stand for its epical nature. Regarding reading experience, Under the Dome is more of a page turner than The Stand. What made The Stand intriguing was the supernatural character of Randall Flagg and the supernatural abilities of Mother Abigail.

The supernatural intrigue (which I love!) began to emerge in Under the Dome, The Great Pumpkin and the Pink Stars, but these concepts were felt half-baked and then fizzled out. I suppose that’s the point – the style is supposed to leave you wanting more creating an eerie mystery. However similar concepts have been developed in a much thorough way in It and The Stand and this was the outcome I wanted in Under The Dome. Overall, it is a fantastic book, the ending was a little disappointing however with King it is the journey not always the destination.

What I am really hoping for is for future short stories or even a sort of sequel that would go into deeper detail about the Leatherheads – I want to know more about them! I just feel that there is more to learn (or for King to write) about the pink moon and stars and The Great Pumpkin! If this comes at a later stage in the future, the lack of supernatural intrigue will be forgiven. For example for me, I have previously said I wasn’t a fan of ’salem’s Lot, however I read the short story Jerusalem’s Lot (in Night Shit) afterwards and it completely changed my opinion. Likewise with Under the Dome, I think a short story needs to supplement it.

I made sure I watched the 13 episodes of the TV adaptation before I blogged about Under the Dome, however there is apparently going to be another season. What is good about the TV series of Under the Dome is that Stephen King is an executive producer so the changes made had his approval. The TV series is very different to the book so I am genuinely curious what’s going to happen in the second season as the storyline seems to be going a very different direction than the book. King has commented, “Other story modifications are slotting into place because the writers have completely re-imagined the source of the Dome.” I am therefore intrigued enough to commit to watch season 2 next year.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of reading Under the Dome and the book is superb in relation to the journey however not so much the destination. I was disappointed with the ending, however as Stephen King is on board with the TV series, maybe he’ll contribute to an alternate ending. I really am hoping that the leatherheads, pink stars and The Great Pumpkin have a wider meaning in King’s cosmology!

Doctor Sleep wakes up with no hangover!

The Shining for me was where it all began. It was the first Stephen King book I read and after reading it, I was hooked! So obviously, when the sequel was released this year (36 years later!), I was super excited to find out how Danny Torrance turned out.

 Although Doctor Sleep is the sequel to The Shining, the story is quite separate and it would be possible to read it without having read The Shining. I would suggest however reading The Shining first to fully enjoy Doctor Sleep.

Most people associate The Shining with Jack Nicholson (“Here’s Johnny!”) who starred in Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of the book. Kubrick’s The Shining is not a straightforward interpretation of the novel; I’m not going to criticise it but to do the film justice, it does need to be viewed as a work in its own right. If you’ve read The Shining, you’ll know it is completely different to the film; Doctor Sleep is the sequel to the BOOK not the FILM.

What you may not know is that Stephen King wrote the screenplay to a TV miniseries of The Shining that first aired in 1997. You can buy the miniseries on DVD (which I did) or it can probably be watched online. I highly recommend watching the TV miniseries before reading Doctor Sleep.

The TV miniseries stays true to the novel, similarly to the TV miniseries of The Stand. There is in my opinion one major difference in the TV miniseries –Jack Torrance is a card-carrying member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I watched the TV miniseries before I read Doctor Sleep and when AA started to be banded about, I must confess I was a little disappointed. By AA featuring in the TV miniseries, it took away some of the fabulous fucked-up grit the book achieved.

The TV miniseries (remember the screenplay written by King) went further than the book did chronologically; in the TV series we see Danny Torrance graduate from High School (at Stovington!) with double honors. At the graduation ceremony, Jack makes an appearance (in ghost-form) which goes further to redeem Jack Torrance as a character. Kubrick’s Jack is beyond redemption!

In Doctor Sleep, the book confirms that Danny graduated high school with double honors but does not mention which high school. The book reveals that although he excelled tremendously academically at high school, at the same time he was starting to drink heavily which is something that the TV miniseries omitted. Well of course it omitted it, that would just piss over the happy ending.

Doctor Sleep is Danny Torrance as an adult who is now known as Dan Torrance. Like his father, he became an alcoholic, but not as functioning as his father as he never made it to college or began a career. The book jumps forward in time to present day where Dan becomes a successful recovering alcoholic (15 years sober) achieved through AA.

The book confirms that Jack Torrance DID NOT go through AA (good!) which contradicts the TV miniseries, and in the book Dan speculates whether things would have worked out differently  (for the better) at the Overlook Hotel if his father did go through AA. I’m interested in King’s train of thought when he wrote the screenplay for the TV miniseries, as not even AA could help Jack!

Alcoholics Anonymous does play a prominent role in Doctor Sleep to an extent where it almost reads as recruitment literature – ALMOST. There is some criticism of the organisation in the book, but the overall message is AA cures alcoholism. Stephen King is a member of AA and still attends meetings so King is writing from first-hand experience – I respect that.  

AA certainly has changed many people’s lives for the better which is a good thing. I have to say that I attended an AA meeting with a friend of mine and found it a little culty. I was uncomfortable with AA’s pseudo-religious “Higher Power” message – the book does make light of this concept in passing though. I think King just about manages to not ram AA down the reader’s throat.  

When I began to read Doctor Sleep, I was totally gripped – it was fantastic. This is the first Stephen King book I’ve read that’s recently been published – so far I’ve only read books from the ‘70s (alcohol decade) and ‘80s (coke decade). Stephen King grounds his work in contemporary reality and you certainly get this with Doctor Sleep. Now I know what it feels like reading a King book when it’s first released – it’s certainly an experience!

This book is a 21^st century King book, smoking doesn’t play a role in the story or the word nigger, the best you’ll get is “Chink” which is the nickname of a member of the True Knot. It’s not as gritty or fucked-up as some of his other work is and it certainly isn’t as scary.

Like a lot of his stories, remember he doesn’t plot, it’s about the journey not the destination. Unfortunately the journey got less gripping towards the latter half. The ending was predictable and has almost a fairy tale quality. What a like though about Doctor Sleep is how King links his other concepts to the shining. Jerusalem’s Lot is mentioned, which kind of made sense as the antagonists are vampires – well sort of.

If you read my blog about ‘salem’s Lot, you’ll remember I wasn’t too impressed with book. Since then after reading Night Shift which contains the short story Jerusalem’s Lot, it changed my mind about the book for the better.   I like how the vampires in the book are after the energy (they call it steam) from children who have the shining. Far better concept than blood-sucking vampires who can be warded off by a crucifix!

I am truly happy for Stephen King that he has achieved sobriety and a better quality of life. I have to admit though there was a certain charm to his drug-induced writing. I love the fact that he doesn’t remember writing Cujo. Who knows, maybe the drugs enhanced his creativity; I think the coke probably gave It some edge – still my favourite book!

This is not to say that I endorse drug use, I’m currently watching Breaking Bad and drugs can really fuck up lives and those around the users. Therefore it is good thing for King and his family that he has sobered up and it hasn’t affected his creativity, but as far as the bizarre-out-there stuff goes, that certainly has been tamed.